"Barbara Hambly - Darwath 1 - The Time of The Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

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The Time of The Dark
by Barbara Hambly
Version 1.0


CHAPTER ONE

Gil knew that it was only a dream. There was no reason
for her to feel fear—she knew that the danger, the chaos,
the blind, sickening nightmare terror that filled the scream-
ing night were not real; this city with its dark, unfamiliar
architecture, these fleeing crowds of panic-stricken men
and women who shoved her aside, unseeing, were only the
vivid dregs of an overloaded subconscious, wraiths that
would melt with daylight.

She knew all this; nevertheless, she was afraid.

She seemed to be standing at the foot of a flight of green
marble stairs, facing into a square courtyard surrounded
by tall peak-roofed buildings. Fleeing people were shoving
past her, jostling her back against the gigantic pedestal
of a malachite statue, without seeming to be aware of her
presence at all; gasping, wild-eyed people, terrified faces
bleached to corpses by the brilliance of the cold quarter
moon. They were pouring out of the gabled houses, the
men clutching chests or bags of money, the women jewels,
lap-dogs, or children crying in uncomprehending terror.
Their hair was wild from sleep, for it was deep night; some
of them were dressed but many were naked, or tripping
over bedclothes hastily snatched, and Gil could smell the
rank terror-sweat of their bodies as they brushed against
her. None of them saw her, none of them stopped; they
stumbled frantically up those vast steps of moonlit marble,
through the dark arch of the gates at the top, and out into
the clamoring streets of the stricken city beyond.

What city? Gil wondered confusedly. And why am I
afraid? This is only a dream.

But she knew. In her heart she knew, as things are
known in dreams, that this scene of frenzied escape was
even now being repeated, like the hundredfold reflections
in a doubled mirror, everywhere in the city around her.
The knowledge and the horror created a chill that crept
along her skin, crawled wormlike through her guts.

They all felt it, too. For not a man would stop to lean